Six Basic Facts About the Nakba Everyone Should

Know
A few weeks ago, Israel celebrated its 75th Independence Day. On May 15, Nakba Day was observed, with the
UN commemorating it for the first time. Several facts need to be understood in order to grasp the lasting
significance of its anniversary

A woman covered by the Palestinian flag takes part in a march to commemorate the 75th 'Nakba Day,' near kibbutz of Megiddo on the area
where the Palestinian village of Lajjun once stood.Credit: Fadi Amun

Dotan Halevy, Maayan Hillel, and the Editors of the Social History Workshop, Haaretz, May 18,
2023
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-18/ty-article-magazine/.premium/six-basic-facts-about-the-nakba-everyone-should-
know/00000188-2e5d-d6e4-ab9d-eefdb0fe0000

Contrary to what propaganda claims, for Palestinians, Nakba Day is not about marking the event of Israel’s
creation as a catastrophe. It’s about the catastrophe that has been the ongoing fate of Palestinians ever
since, as a consequence of a persistent policy by Israel and many other countries, who refuse to see the
Palestinians as a people and a national group entitled to self-determination.

Nakba Day marks an ongoing and exhaustively documented historic catastrophe, a catastrophe on which
the State of Israel as we know it was built. The dimensions of this catastrophe, how it unfolded, the
violence it entailed, and its long-term ramifications for Palestinians, Israelis, and the Middle East are still
being learned. Seventy-five years after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced, there are
some basic facts that everyone should know to understand the continued significance of the Nakba.

1. Population: Prior to the 1948 war, 600,000 Jews and 1.4 million Palestinians lived in British Mandatory
Palestine. Of those 1.4 million Palestinians, 900,000 lived in the territory that would become the State of
Israel after the war. Most of this population, 700-750,000 people, were either actively expelled or fled
beyond the border – to Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, or Transjordan – or areas controlled by the Arab armies
involved in the war (the West Bank and Gaza Strip).
 People participate in the march to commemorate the 75th 'Nakba Day,' near kibbutz of Megiddo on the area where the Palestinian village of
Lajjun once stood.Credit: Fadi Amun

Thus, at the end of the war, a Palestinian minority of 156,000 people remained within Israel’s boundaries.
Of this number, 46,000 were internal refugees who were either expelled or fled from their homes and land
and had to continue living in other places inside Israel.

Historical research has found no evidence that the Arab leadership issued a sweeping order to the
population to flee their homes.

Contrary to popular belief in Israel, the only documented case in which Arab leaders called upon the Arab
population to flee was in Haifa. They left the city when it was under attack by the pre-state Haganah
paramilitary forces, despite the exhortations of some of the Jewish leadership to stay. Historical research
has found no evidence that the Arab leadership issued a sweeping order to the population to flee their
homes. This claim apparently originated in Israeli propaganda from the 1950s and ‘60s, which tried to
portray the Palestinian uprooting as the result of a voluntary choice.

Without the Nakba, Israel as we know it could not have come into being.

2. Land: With limited exceptions, Palestinian refugees were never allowed to return to their homes and
land, a declared Israeli policy that was drawn up already during the war. Preventing the return of
Palestinian refugees (referred to in Israeli parlance as “infiltration”) was a key project in the early days of
the Israeli state. To this end, during the war and in the years immediately following it, Israel destroyed
approximately 400 abandoned Palestinian villages and Palestinian neighborhoods in cities, or settled
Jewish immigrants there. Over time, the villages’ names were erased from the map, marked as “ruins,” or
renamed in Hebrew.

Most of the land in those villages was appropriated immediately after the 1948 War and became state land
through the Absentees Property Law, which defined Palestinian internal refugees as “present absentees.”
Further land expropriations followed in the coming decades. Palestinian internal refugees were also barred
from returning to their villages, due to restrictions on movement imposed by the military administration
that ruled over Palestinians in Israel until the end of 1966.
 A Palestinian woman and a child at the UNRWA Khan Yunis Camp located in the Gaza Strip, in 1948.Credit: AP

In all, 85 percent of the land holdings that were owned by Palestinians within the area that became the
State of Israel prior to 1948 were expropriated and became state-owned land. As a result, agricultural lands
which constituted the main sources of income for the Palestinian minority that remained within Israel were
also seized by the state.

3. Culture and politics: Alongside the expulsion of the Palestinian population and the seizure of its
sources of income, the Nakba also eliminated a dynamic national community with a thriving culture deeply
rooted in the land that became Mandatory Palestine in 1917.

With limited exceptions, Palestinian refugees were never allowed to return to their homes and land,
a declared Israeli policy that was drawn up already during the war.

In the 1930s and ‘40s, Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Acre, Gaza, and other cities became thriving centers of
Palestinian business and leisure. These cities had Arab law and accounting firms, cinemas, theaters, cafes,
restaurants, hotels, libraries, beaches, and sports clubs. They were also home to cultural associations which
Palestinians visited on a daily basis, where they strengthened their long-held ties with intellectuals, artists,
and politicians from across the Middle East.

Like the Zionist population, from the end of the Ottoman era, the Palestinian population envisioned itself
striding toward a future sovereign and democratic state. The 1948 war severed this process. When the war
ended, Nazareth was the sole Arab city remaining in Israel, while Palestinians became a small minority in
the other major cities.

4. Causes of the Nakba: Did Palestinians bring the 1948 catastrophe upon themselves by opposing the
1947 UN Partition Plan? This question has a normative answer and a practical answer.
 Women walking in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon, in 1952.Credit: AP

Normatively, it needs to be asked honestly: If, today, a community of immigrants was to come to Israel,
claim historical ownership of the land, and propose that we Jewish Israelis share it, would we think it was
justified and be prepared to “compromise” on a partition of the land? For Palestinians, the Partition Plan
was akin to saying, “You invaded my house, and now you’re willing to compromise on how to divide the
rooms.”

A clear majority among Palestinians and their political leadership was ready to accept the Jewish
immigrants in Palestine as a minority with equal rights within a future state with an Arab majority.
However, even for the minority that was prepared to compromise on a partition of the land, the 1947 UN
Partition Plan constituted an unfair division of territory and resources.

Palestinians do not think of the Nakba just as a historic event, but as a type of ongoing existence. It is
reaffirmed in every encounter with a soldier at a checkpoint, every land expropriation and
restriction on movement, or war on Gaza.

This takes us to the practical answer. When the Partition Plan was voted on, most of the land in the
proposed Jewish state was not under Jewish ownership and was home to 350,000 Arab Palestinians. The
Jewish state was to include the city of Haifa and its port, the country’s main economic asset; the coastal
plain that was the home of most of the Palestinian citrus industry; the roads traversing the length of the
country; and the fertile lands of the valleys. The entire Negev was designated for the Jewish state despite
extremely limited Jewish land ownership there, on the assumption that Jews had a greater potential to
develop it in the future rather than existing ownership or land rights.

5. Why don’t Palestinians put the past behind them?

For Palestinians, the Nakba is not the past. It is the present. The process that began in 1948 has essentially
never ended. After the war, Israel expropriated Palestinian lands and imposed a military administration on
its Palestinian citizens which lasted until 1966. Then, in 1967, Israel imposed military rule in the occupied
West Bank and Gaza Strip. The military government and the settlement project continue to appropriate
more and more Palestinian lands, overrunning Palestinians’ individual liberties, human rights, and basic
dignity, practically destroying the possibility of Palestinians establishing an independent state in the
future.

A man paints the Palestinian flag and branches on a canvas, as part of the march to commemorate the 'Nakba Day,' April 2023.Credit: Fadi
Amun

The reality of life as refugees has sentenced generations of Palestinians to a life of suffering and poverty
that continues decades after the war. Their situation only worsened in the wars of 1967 and 1982, and the
periodic wars and siege on Gaza since 2007.Indeed, Israel is not solely responsible for the condition of
Palestinians in the refugee camps or for these military clashes. But the roots of these conflicts
unquestionably go back to 1948 as a formative moment, and imbue it with meaning each time anew.
Therefore, Palestinians do not think of the Nakba just as a historic event, but as a type of ongoing
existence. It is reaffirmed in every encounter with a soldier at a checkpoint, every land expropriation and
restriction on movement, or war on Gaza. Thus, the trauma of 1948 continues to be a pillar of Palestinian
identity and collective memory.

Does this mean there’s no way out of the present situation? Not at all. Throughout the shared history of
Israelis and Palestinians, there have been countless opportunities to remedy the injustice of 1948 by means
of an honest recognition by Israel of the Palestinian tragedy, of Palestinian national rights, compensation
for their material losses, the return of some of the refugees to their land, and finally, drawing sustainable
borders or jointly deciding on the establishment of a binational state through suitable political
arrangements. Israel has chosen not to do so, out of its own considerations, but it could also choose
differently in the future.

6. The Nakba is a matter for Palestinians – Why should Israelis be concerned about it?

Because the 1948 War was not one between two separate countries in which one side simply lost. The
removal of the Palestinian population is what enabled Israel’s formation as a democratic country with a
clear Jewish majority. The erasure of Palestinian culture and history is what enabled the modern State of
Israel to draw a direct connection between itself and the biblical era, while ignoring the long and rich Arab
history of the land.

Why are Jews afraid of the Nakba?

In other words, without the Nakba, Israel as we know it could not have come into being. This places a
considerable responsibility on Jewish Israelis to recognize the loss upon which their country is built.

But what’s most important is the present and future of everyone in this land. If Israelis want to bequeath to
their children a reality that is not a perpetual conflict based upon oppression, violence, and erasure, they
must address the wounds of 1948.

Recognition and solidarity with the Palestinian catastrophe and pain do not negate Israeliness, Jewishness
or Israelis’ right to live in peace and security. Such recognition and solidarity comprise a real chance for a
peaceful and secure life in Israel.

Dotan Halevy is a postdoctoral fellow at the Polonsky Academy for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
and Social Sciences at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.

Maayan Hillel is a lecturer at the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies at Northwestern
University.

The Social History Workshop is a blog founded by historians and scholars of the Middle East in order to
make cutting edge scholarship on the region and the world accessible to a broad audience. Follow us on
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 How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs

 A Brief History of Nakba Day
 The Trauma of the Nakba Is Here to Stay